FUTURAMA - Forever, But Not Long Enough
by Maelontikus Phutura
Summary: The unofficial sequel to the critically acclaimed series is here. Keep in mind: This is very dark and depressing. Viewer Discretion Advised.


FUTURAMA - Forever, But Not Long Enough

Space... the dimming lights of the stars twinkle as the Planet Express ship slowly creeps across the backdrop.

Bender slowly walks back and forth inside the cargo hold, thinking. Leela is at the helm, with an angered look on her face. But Fry is nowhere to be seen.

As the ship lands in New New York, the Profesor looks at the returning crew with a saddened look on his face. Leela walks emotionlessly down the ship's stairway, but Bender does not.

The Proffesor looks at Leela, depressed maybe, and removes his glasses to reveal two dead, white eyes. Leela has no emotions towards this, and keeps walking. "Scruffy is dead." the Profesor says. He walks towards his office in dead silence, almost as dead as his eyes...

Fry is finally shown, lying in bed, presumably because he had been late for work, again. It had happened often after the 'incident' that had happened the year before. He couldn't believe it had really been a whole year since then.

As he realized this he slowly got up out his bed and said to himself, "Why? Why me?" He was just as depressed as the Proffesor. He put on his clothes, which were scattered around the apartment. He finally put on his jacket and headed out the door.

Fry walked for some time until finally making it to Scruffy's funeral. The only people there were the Planet Express crew, but none of them seemed pretty sad at all. The gravestone read: "Scruffy, 29?-3014. Death is Natural." The Profesor walks away, confused.

As the crew sits around the Planet Express building, a news broadcast appears on the TV, Linda reads the teleprompter as if she's bored, and Morbo is nowhere to be seen. The cameraman zooms in on Linda's face as it becomes more and more realistic; until the screen goes to static.

Zoidberg just stares at the TV and breaks down in tears. His crying echoes across the building. Hermes comes in and hits him, "Snap out of it!" and then he leaves. Zoidberg stops crying and sits down, pulling out a gun. He points it to his own head and pulls the trigger.

Blood splatters all across the room. The Profesor walks in, shrugs it off and says, "Who's next?" he sighs and dumps the body in the dumpster outside. Fry comes in and apologizes to the Professor, "It's all your fault, but who carez now?" The Professor sighs again and walks off.

Fry walks frantically around the office, as if he's looking for something. Leela walks in, still angry and chases Fry down the hallway. "It's all your fault!" she yells. Fry gives up and falls to the ground, although he covers himself. Leela just walks up to him and starts crying.

Fry feels the guilt wash over him, or maybe it was his tears. He stands up slowly and attempts to hug Leela. She shoves him away and walks off. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." he repeats, louder each time, and than quieter, "I guess a thousand years was not long enough."

The Professor sits at his desk thinking profoundly, perhaps thinking of a solution to some problem. A sound distracts him, the sound of scratching coming from the roof. He decided to check the roof for the source of the noise, only to find Hermes standing at the top, ready to jump. "Your turn to go?", the Professor said. Hermes just turns to him and says "One of you is next." He jumps.

Hermes falls straight down onto the concrete sidewalk, dead. The Professor shrugs off yet another death and continues his work. He tries turning on a computer but it doesn't work, he tries another and yet again, it doesn't work. The Professor sighs and covers his face with his hands, and cries. Amy comes in and tells him "I'm going soon." The Professor was not surprised, "We all will."

The Professor calls in Bender to help, seeing how his other machines were malfunctioning. Bender doesn't respond to anything the Professor says, he just walks back and forth, back and forth, slowly, tediously. The Professor cries and goes back to his desk and writes in his journal: "If only I knew how to reverse all this, If only I could prevent my own birth, or better yet, Fry's."

Amy gets in the Planet Express ship and takes it into space. She stops it right between the Earth and the Moon. She accepts her fate and crawls into the airlock, and cuts off the oxygen supply, asphyxiating herself. Her body lies in the metal room and starts to wither away.

Realizing the ship had gone, the Professor sends Fry and Leela to find it. Fry and Leela, having been very distant since the 'incident' silently make the trip, without making any eye contact or even speaking. They find the ship and the body. They quickly return to Earth and resue their lives, for what's left of them.

The Professor, finding no way to reverse the 'incident' from ever happening, decides to also aceppt his fate, and so he slowly attempts to reconcile his relationship with his uncle. "Fry? What do you think of me? As your nephew?", of course he was never proud of calling himself so, he finally found peace in that aspect of his life.

Fry responds, "You were great, and you were the only family I had left." Whether it was guilt or another emotion, Leela finds herself crying yet again. As she walks away, Fry looks at his nephew with a saddened look. "Go ahead, it might be the last time you share with her." Fry smiles slightly, hugs his nephew and follows Leela out the building.

Leela walks aimlessly through the seemingly deserted streets of New New York with her head down, sobbing. Fry attempts at compassion but feels too disturbed to talk to her, but with some gut feeling manages to speak, "If you could go back, would you do it?" Leela stops and looks at him.

"I would do it. Forever. But I guess forever is just not long enough to forget what had happened. We've been through it all already, for a thousand years, it's over." Leela sits down on a bench, her legs crossed and her head pointed downward, pondering on whether she really believed it all.

Fry sits beside her, trying to comfort her, even a little. "I waited for you, but now that I know we can't be together makes me the saddest person I know. I can't take this any longer." He began to cry, but this time he was quiet enough so that Leela could not hear him.

"Maybe we can start all over, one last time. Please?" Leela looked at Fry and smiled, "One more time, meet me at my place tonight." Fry smiled, for once in a long time he was happy.

Meanwhile, the Professor had decided to take matters into his own hands. Ignoring all that had been going on around him, he boarded the ship and flew off into space, and kept going. Eventually he had flewn so far, he had reached the end of the universe.

Looking straight-on into the blinding darkness, he remembered his childhood, his first words, his first steps, his first day at school, his first kiss, the good times, the bad times. He had a pretty good life, and knowing that he did, he was happy once again.

At that moment, he heard a noise coming from behind. He turned around only to see Bender standing there, staring at him. "You? You're supposed to be broken!" he yelled. Bender just kept staring as he pulled out a knife, slowly, intimately, and carefully raised it in his hand.

The Professor had known that his life had been good to him and smiled, letting in anything that came next. Bender walked up to the Professor, very slowly and said, "I'm sorry. You were the first real friend I ever had, I'm sorry." At that moment, he drove the knife into the Professor heart, killing him.

Fry was nervous about tonight. Would he be too late like he always was? He had gone to the end of time and back twice, forward a thousand years and yet again to come to where he was now. All the special moments in his life, all for what? For Leela of course. She was the only thing that mattered now. Not anyone else, not even his best friend.

He let himself into the building knowing no one would be there to tell him otherwise, walked up to Leela's apartment door and knocked. Leela opened the door, wearing her best dress, the one she wore a thousand times before. "Your here." She sounded surprised, yet confused.

"I wanted to be early, I couldn't stand being late again. I was always late, always. But now I know better than to have you waiting." Leela smiled, and shead a tear, "Well, come on in." Fry had brought with him an assortment of things to make the moment more special: flowers, chocolates, and a case of some kind of jewlery.

They sat at dinner for the first time in a year, or was it more? Of course, since then it had been complicated. They tried not to focus on the present, but the past, and the future. "After all we've been through, here we are. I've waited too long for this moment. Why couldn't it be like this a long time ago?" Fry said. Leela looked at him.

"I don't know. Maybe it was me. Maybe I didn't see this side of you. Of course when I did, I had doubted it could really be you. But I was wrong, you really are a good person, Fry. I wish we would've done this sooner." Leela answered.

Fry smiled. He hesitantly took out the jewlery case from his pocket under the table so that Leela couldn't see it. "Uh, Leela?" he said. "Yes, Fry?" Leela replied. Fry stood up, walked around the table and kneeled. "Leela, there's something I need to ask you, again. Since we only have an amount of time before we... go, well..."

Fry opened the case, revealing a diamond ring, "Will you marry me? One last time?" Leela's face turned from surprise to disgust, "Again? Fry, I can't do this again. I wanted things to be the way they used to, but not like this. The answer is no, at least for now." Fry grew a worried look on his face, "I can't wait any longer. I've waited for just about forever."

"Maybe forever was not long enough." Leela had almost yelled. Knowing she had upsetted him, she started feeling uneasy and nauseous and decided to sit down. Fry felt more sad in this moment than ever before, "I guess forever is really not long enough."

Fry left, looking for a quiet place where he could be himself again. Everywhere he looked he felt unomfortable. He made his was to the Planet Express building and stood alongside the river. About to cry, he opened his palm to look at the ring.

As his head spun with memories of the past, and the past before, he felt enraged, sickened, humiliated, but above all, worthless. He threw the ring into the river, knowing that Leela would never want to be with him. He continued his walk through the streets looking for the closest place to home.

He climbed down the old stairway to New York City. It had been a long time since he had last seen his old stomping grounds. Almost 15 years and it still hadn't changed a bit. As he walked the ancient streets he stumbled upon Panucci's Pizza. Many fond memories here. Of course, in one life, long ago, Seymour had been waiting here for his master to come back; until he died. Not long enough.

He continued on, seeing all the good and the bad from his past life come back to him, all of it. His family was alive, Seymour, Mr. Panucci, his friends. They were all there, in spirit. That's when he came across his old house, still standing. He smilied.

It was unlivable, but not unfixable. His smile began to fade, maybe his life really wasn't as good as he remembered, or maybe he was just remembering wrong. Than it came back to him, the reason why he had been searching all this time. Why was he really here?

It was unbelievable, but reasonable now. Fry ran back through the dead city and up the long stairway to the surface. With tear-cleanesed eyes and an aching stomache, Fry ran to the last place he had expected to go. But now it had all made sense.

Fry had returned to the surface, to reality perhaps. He ran across the city, more determined than ever. He looked around every corner of the city to find it but couldn't seem to. Then he saw it, up above, a sign so familiar he had reckoned it as his rightful birthplace into the future, it read: "Applied Cryogenics".

Had it really all come back to this? Fry ran up the stairway, across the hallway and into the lab where he had been frozen and thawed out. He was back, after all this time, of course he had returned but not for the reason he had now.

Fry looked across the room and realized how heavy of a situation he had been making. He dropped to his knees and wept. "Well, I'm back." He walked up to the very tube he had been thrown into those many years before and intimatley touched the glass, crying. "This is for you Leela."

"Fry?" Leela was in the doorway, watching him caress the glass. "I'm sorry-", Fry spoke before she could finish, "I'm sorry. I was wrong, I was all wrong. A thousand years I waited for you, but now even forever will not be long enough a wait."

Fry set the timer to an unsure date; the timer had been unreadable. "Goodbye, forever." Fry broke the handle off the door and quickly got inside before Leela could stop him. "No! Fry!" Leela was too late, Fry was locked in the tube for good.

Leela broke down crying, thinking it was all her fault. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Why? Why not me? Why?" Leela tried to penetrate the glass to get Fry out but the glass was too thick. She finally gave up all hope and accepted her fate, but what now?

Billions of years had past, all life on Earth and in the Solar System and even all other life had been diminished. The Earth was a wasteland. The dying sun had scorched the sky and the Earth's crust had crumbled. Everything was a desert now, cracked and desolate.

Suddenly, a strange object appears in the sky, burning as it gets closer and closer to the ground, about to crash. But lands perfectly, it is the Planet Express ship, although now it had not looked as well as in its prime.

Only one lifeform had survived, an artificial lifeform at that. It was Bender. Why it took all this time was a mystery to even him. But in any condition, he was back. He looked around him, looking for a single sign of life. Not until he saw it.

It was far into the distance, a black speck, too far to see. His intention was to find out what it was, and so he ran towards it. Just as he got close enough to make out what it exactly was, he knew exactly what it was.

The tube that Fry had been frozen in was still there, and so was Fry. Bender was quick to save his friend. His strength coupled with the decomposition of the metals had given him the opportunity to open it safely. As a cool breeze rushed out of the tube, Fry stepped out.

The heat did not bother him, he was too busy worrying about the cold. "Bender?" he said. Bender looked with a worried expression. Fry stood up and said, "Bender. Why? How? You were dead!" Bender stared at him, sighed and told him, "It's over, everyone's dead, I couldn't understand the situation so I just thought, calculated, for billions of years."

Fry felt pity, "Why did you come back for me?" Bender hesitated, "You were the last one. You started it, the incident. Only you can reverse all this, but now it's too late, it's over." Bender broke down in tears.

Fry comforted his friend, assuring him that it would all be alright and that they can watch the Earth be destroyed together. That was until he realized, "Leela! Where is she?" Bender looked around him and as if he could see through time and space, gave him the answer.

"Leela is... dead. She's been dead a long time now. Maybe, just maybe she waited for you... Forever," Fry was reassured by those words and so he finished, "But not long enough."

Leela waited for Fry, forever. She lived a full life, waiting. With no worries, no debts, no one to tell her what not to do. She waited for her only friend to come back, but of course, forever was not long enough...

THE END


End file.
